I am publishing this list in case it might help someone else to understand that when shit like this is going on, it is time to leave the relationship you are in, or that you are about to be served legal papers, depending on which side of it you are on. It will not get better. Trust me on this. It only gets worse. Some things may look better at the surface level from time to time, but the underlying problems are very likely still there, which led to things getting to this point in the first place, in which “this point” means that the relationship is so intolerably toxic on a continuous, ongoing basis that it just sucks the life out of you so all you can do is survive from one day to the next. That is no way to live. Believe me, I’ve been there. (Or at this time, I am STILL here, but not for much longer).

Ok, now for the list:

January – June 2013

Foreword:

You have maintained for years on end that you have absolutely no idea why your former wife of nearly 20 years divorced you. Based on my own experience and some things that you have told me, I have a few ideas as to why she apparently found being married to you so intolerable that whatever she would have to face as an ageing, divorced woman with few job skills and no economically viable options available to her in that virulently misogynistic society would STILL be less worse than having to suffer through one more day of living with you, and she didn’t have anywhere near the array of alternatives available to her that I do, and Japan does not allow the option of “no-fault divorce”. It would appear that even Japanese women have their limits as to how much misery they are willing to put up with.

Okay…the list…for real this time!

I have no fucking idea what to soundtrack this piece with, but oh how I wish it were so straightforward as to just

“Hop on the plane, Jane

Get a new life, Wife

Drop off the key, Marie”

and set myself free, but alas, it is not. At any rate, this is a list of over 50 things you do on a continuous, day-in, day-out basis that constitute reasons why I have had enough and am going to divorce you…

1. Because you no longer seem able to communicate with me in a neutral (= non-offensive) tone of voice. You scream. You yell. You bitch. You whine. You complain. You criticize. You accuse. You fuss and yap at me in that excruciatingly annoying, agitated, insistent tone of voice of yours that grates on my nerves like a cheese shredder. Practically every fucking sound you make in my direction is toxic and negative, criticism or complaining or a personal attack or accusation of some sort, and I have fucking well had enough of it!

Corollary to #1: Carrying this further, I am fucking sick of you yelling at me and abusing me as a matter of general principle before even making any attempt to find out if whatever-the-fuck it is that you’re bitching about is even happening…asshole….

Corollary #2 to #1: I am willing to believe that you think your constant fussing and whining and complaining and criticizing every-fucking-thing and everyone and generally spewing incessant toxic negativity at the world constitutes “making conversation”, but…well…that’s one more reason!

2. Because of your apparent inability to comprehend and obey stupid-simple directives such as “Shut the fuck up”, “Go the fuck away”, “Leave me the fuck alone”, etc.

3. Because you have long since ruined every god-damned thing in my life that I used to enjoy.

4. Because even when you are actually trying to do something nice, you are such a dick about it that it just pisses me off.

5. Because living with you has made me so hair-trigger stressed out and angry and upset and fatigued all the time that I inappropriately overreact to the most perfectly innocuous and containable situations as a matter of habit now.

6. Because you have apparently never learned to not take out your personal shit on other people, and that’s just fucking WRONG!

7. Because whenever you’re not making the perfect the enemy of the good (so it’s impossible to get ANYTHING done!), when something actually does get done, you sabotage it by doing a slovenly, half-assed job of it.

8. Because of your insistence on making every. single. innocuous. fucking stupid thing a big, melodramatic hassle. That trauma-drama addiction of yours is EXTREMELY fatiguing!

9. Because I SPECIFICALLY ASK YOU NOT to do something (situation-specific, time-sensitive thing) and you acknowledge that you understand what I am asking and agree, and then you fucking turn right around and do it anyway!

10. Because you apparently do not understand how fucking ANNOYING you are! I can easily imagine that you were most successful in getting the attention of your severely mentally ill alcoholic mother when you were a little kid by making such an infuriating, persistent fucking nuisance of yourself that she would indeed drop whatever she was doing just to belt the shit out of you, or by whining and complaining incessantly about how sick you are, but suffice it to say, I do not wish to remain in an intimate relationship with someone who has demonstrated no willingness to outgrow such deeply dysfunctional behaviour.

11. Because even when you are genuinely trying to be helpful, you still make shit of everything! I mean, seriously, whatever you don’t break, you piss on and it rusts! How does one manage that?!! Only through extreme, mindless indolence and incompetence, and an extraordinary lack of concern about how all the shit you fuck up affects other people, and the insane amount of perfectly unnecessary extra work and hassle and distress and expense and damage and loss and waste and ruin you cause for others with your mindless behaviour apparently. That alone would have eventually wore me down and I’d have left you for that, irrespective of the abusive, drug-addicted, mentally disturbed conduct.

12. Because I cannot bear to have to live in a squalid, confused pile of shit. Your apparent belief that every available surface in the whole damn house is an acceptable place to dump a load of crap on, having to always be clearing your shit out of my way just so I can walk across the room to do my life, etc., drives me crazy, but this is what you have been forcing on me for all these years, and I can’t take it anymore. That’s another thing I find so intolerable and distressing that I would have eventually left you over that in and of itself.

Axiom to #12. Because you are a walking, talking PATHOGEN! For fuck’s sake, I am DESPERATELY SICK of having to live with a person who contaminates every fucking thing they touch with all manner of biohazardous filth! I. am. sick. to. death. of having to spend so much of my exiguous “free” time cleaning and decontaminating the shit that you smear all over the fucking house!

13. Because instead of getting your own shit together, you make a full-time career of hovering over me, interfering with and trying to dictate and control every. fucking. thing I do, and repeatedly interrupting me/ breaking my concentration so I can’t get anything done at all. That is IN-FUCKING-TOLERABLE!!! I realize that you may well have never experienced being under the gun to have to get shit done because you’ve apparently always had someone else pulling your weight for you since you have never seen fit to take that responsibility yourself. Nevertheless, that does not make it any easier to endure.

Postulate to #13. More broadly, this is part and parcel of your refusal to allow me to be what I am and do things the way I do them, and your insistence on trying to coerce me into being something else instead, i.e., the narcissistic thing of trying to control others instead of controlling yourself. Piss off!

14. Because your profoundly entrenched core assumption that your way of experiencing and perceiving and going about things and the way things are done in Japan is the universal standard and the only acceptable or legitimate way of doing so is anathema to me.

15. Because you do not seem to get the concept that I have needs, much less that I am deserving of getting my needs met, and instead seem to perceive me as some sort of inexhaustible commodity for you to consume and abuse in any way you see fit. I can’t do a single. fucking. thing for myself (as opposed to whatever you want me to do for you instead) without you giving me shit about it. For that matter, because I have had to do without getting my basic needs met and make do with totally inadequate conditions for at least 15 years now, so it’s someone else’s turn — I have suffered enough!

16. Because you don’t seem to give a shit about what is important to me since you apparently view me exclusively through the lens of my usefulness to you as a musician and economic provider and general shit wrangler.

17. Because you do not respect my boundaries. In addition to the physical and verbal/ emotional abuse, you apparently do not understand that people have a basic human right to privacy. Practically every damn time I go in the bathroom to brush my teeth or do my makeup or whatever, you suddenly decide that you have to come barging in to do some bodily function right at that moment. You apparently were not taught as you ought to have been as a very small child to wait your turn and respect other people’s right to privacy when using the facilities. It is forgivable on an occasional basis, but the constant, day-in, day-out boundary violation/ privacy invasion is intolerable. It is not my job to have to train you in such basic human manners as that. It similarly annoys the hell out of me when you come into my room and then prop the door open on your way out as if you think you have some special right to surveil me or jam up whatever I am doing with the noise you are making in the other room. Oh that’s right (slaps forehead) — you believe that you are so special that you are above having to observe the most minimal standards of basic human decency!

18. Further to that, because I am not at all interested in being in an intimate relationship with a person that I have to literally get into a fist fight with in order to enforce my personal boundaries.

19. Because you apparently do not understand the difference between having a conversation and delivering a monologue or a lecture. In practically every case in which you actually engage with me in such a way as to elicit a response out of me, it is almost always just to manipulate me into saying something that you can attack me for. In fact, I can’t even so much as admit that I like a piece of music without you attacking me for it.

20. Because you second-guess me and argue with me over every. single. fucking. thing — even things you don’t even understand — as a matter of general principle since with you it’s all about winning the argument at the expense of ever accomplishing anything; and then you piss and shit all over me because nothing ever fucking gets done, because YOU make a full-time occupation of obstructing me from getting shit done, and I have well and truly had enough of this crazymaking lunacy! For that matter, you apparently know everything already, so if you’re just going to argue with me and second-guess me every time you ask me about something, then DON’T FUCKING ASK ME IN THE FIRST PLACE!

21. Because of your obsession with impossibility. In your world, every fucking thing is impossible. You’re dead in the water the minute anything becomes the tiniest bit challenging. You won’t even try to solve any given problem. Instead, you do everything you can to PREVENT ANYONE ELSE from trying to solve the fucking problem, i.e., by spouting dickish, asswipe-y remarks trying to pick some stupid fight, throwing a temper tantrum like a petulant toddler, anything to disrupt and obstruct progress and destroy any possibility of a successful outcome to anything. I fucking give up — I can’t take it anymore!

22. Because I can’t fucking stand any more of that execrable noise you make when you come shuffling down the corridor to my office room to harass me about whatever-the-fuck-it-is-this-time. Or that hideously disgusting vomit noise you make gagging yourself with your toothbrush every morning that I am home and have to listen to it.

23. Because of your refusal to even try to meet me halfway. That is unacceptable. You have lived here for NINE YEARS now, and STILL can’t communicate in passable English, make a simple phone call, or even find your way down the fucking street?!! This language barrier is fucking tiresome, and I am fed up with it being wholly dependent on ME in order for ANY communication to ever take place, and it STILL gets all fucked up and is a maddening hassle! I suppose this is a symptom of your inveterate sense of entitlement — this belief of yours that it is incumbent upon everyone else to knock themselves out to accommodate your “special needs”. For fuck’s sake, you are CHOOSING to live in a country where ENGLISH is the working language, and things are done differently than they are in Japan. Grow the fuck up!

24. Because your total lack of any respectable effort or willingness to take any responsibility at all for yourself is appalling, as is your favourite excuse of “Oh, I just don’t feel like doing that!” Well, I’ve got news for you. I don’t exactly *feel like* dealing with the overwhelming majority of the shit I have to slog through every fucking day of my life either, but I do feel a basic sense of responsibility to have to suck it up and get it done. It bears repeating: Grow the fuck up!

25. Because you refuse to cooperate in and/or outrightly sabotage anything that would help make you viable here and lessen your oppressive dependency on me.

26. Because of your apparent inability to figure out and do the most stupid-simple things for yourself, and your resulting insistent dependence on me to do practically every god-damned thing for you, and I can’t take it anymore. For example, you maintain that it is “too hard for you” to change an “American” light bulb or set an “American” alarm clock so mommy has wake you up in the morning. Gee, that’s too bad! Maybe you should move into some sort of special home for the mentally challenged and get the fuck out of my life already!

27. Because when I am so. fucking. EXHAUSTED that all I feel like doing is taking some strong medication that will knock me out for the entire weekend in the vain hope of some sort of illusory recovery, you come around whining at me to do some damn thing for you that any mentally competent adult ought to be able to do for themself. I cannot physically withstand any more of having to be your 24/7 life support machine. This situation is 100% unsustainable. Additionally, whenever you demand that I do some fucking ridiculous thing for you because “you can’t do it, so I have to do it for you”, and I tell you to get one of your Japanese friends to help you with it since I’m already up to my eyes dealing with all the (mostly unnecessary) shit you cause day in and day out, you come back at me with that infuriating spoiled toddler bullshit pat answer of “how?!”

28. While “helping” me vacuum, you make a steady stream of obnoxious, vituperative remarks at me about the stuff that I keep, while YOU are the fucking packrat that clogs our house to the rafters with all the random stuff YOU keep buying/acquiring (not to mention all these instruments, many of which you don’t even really need), making it next to impossible to clean whole sections of the house (and without contributing one fucking cent to rent/household overhead), and then keep on getting MORE stuff and then turn around and demand that *I* stop spending money!

29. Because your repertoire of problem-solving skills seems to boil down to the one tactic: “Whine at Mommy to make the problem(s) go away for you”. I am totally, one-fucking-hundred percent FED UP with having to “live for two”, function as a single mom, 24/7 life-support machine, caregiver, etc., of a perfectly able-bodied adult while being treated like shit on top of having to support the whole fucking house since you “don’t feel like” engaging in any sort of revenue generating activity. I belatedly realised that since the women in Japan generally do every-fucking-thing while the male children have traditionally been adulated and indulged and spoiled into oblivion, that has produced an entire population of the most legendarily useless, incompetent, selfish, entitled, narcissistic male humans on the planet. I’m done! Kaput….

Corollary to #29. Because I did not work my ass off to get three university degrees and cultivate a wide array of economically productive skills so I could spend all of my “free” time cleaning up after and dealing with endless bullshit caused by a spoiled child that’s older than I am!

30. Because your pathological habit of asking permission about absolutely every single thing and sitting there waiting for me to do whatever-thing first (ostensibly to demonstrate what to do) is creepy and annoying. Particularly when you do it more pointedly when you’re trying to pick a fight because you are apparently aware that it irritates the shit out of me.

31. Because one of your favourite ways to fuck up dinner is to come shuffling into the kitchen five minutes after I told you the food is ready, and then take your good old time screwing around opening/closing windows, turning lights off, selecting music, re-rinsing the stuff in the sink that I had rinsed already or that didn’t even need rinsing, washing your hands, etc., etc., until the food gets cold, then sit there copycatting everything I do while staring at me with that look of yours which has no other objective than to elicit an incensed “What the fuck are you looking at?!” response to base a pretext to start abusing and shitting all over me for whatever-the-fuck bee is up your butt at the moment, while criticising every single detail about the food that isn’t 5-star gourmet-perfect. Fuck off!

32. Because for you, NO excuse is too lame or stupid or childish or irrelevant to use as a pretext to throw a shit-stink so you can jones on the trauma-drama of it. Enough already. Get the fuck out of my life!

33. Because I am desperately weary of the endless workarounds, hoop jumping, walking on eggshells to avoid setting you off, and the social isolation of not being free to go out and spend time with people that are not toxic, and whenever we do go out, having to stress out over whether you are going to behave decently, or if you’re going to flip out over some random trigger and throw a big, ugly stink and louse up the occasion for everyone, or at least make me extremely uncomfortable.

34. Because you ask me to drive and then sit there meddling and backseat driving at me the entire way.

Axiom to #34. For that matter, I find driving with you highly stressful in general because you are such an asshole to other drivers. You are choosing to live in L.A. and this place is full of inconsiderate, narcissistic assclowns who operate motor vehicles. You are one of them. Fucking deal with it. Besides, they can’t even hear all the hateful, vituperative, toxic waste you spew at them. All that shit lands on ME.

35. Because you continuously create intolerable and/or impossible conditions for me, and then abuse and shit all over me because I can’t cope with them. (stellar example: Thailand incident)

36. Because this inveterately entrenched mentality of yours in which you’re just sitting around waiting for some sort of fairy godmother to redeem you and bring you instant fame and fortune and make you an overnight sensation without you lifting a finger to do anything on your own to earn it is ANATHEMA to me, and more broadly, so is your inveterately entitled attitude toward every-fucking-thing!

37. Because when you find yourself low on money, what do you do? You look at me and say in that loathsome, petulant toddler voice of yours, “I have only $10 left in my wallet and another $20 or so in the bank. Do something!”

38. Because when I tell you that you need to find a way to earn money and you come back at me with, “Find me a job!”

39. Because you have dispossessed me of just about everything I have worked my ass off all my life to be able to benefit from. I. Am. Just. So. Fucking. Fed. Up. with the miserable, degrading poverty you have forced on me with your unwillingness to do anything to earn your keep. If you would contribute something to my life other than endless grief, perhaps the financial impoverishment might be easier to endure, but you don’t. Or at least not enough to offset the overwhelming detriment your omnipresence imposes on me.

40. Because you are extremely manipulative and totally out of touch with reality, and that is becoming, and perhaps always has been a dangerous nuisance.

41. Because your pathological need to have to make a big fuss of Cassandra-izing over every fucking disaster and geopolitical event and tinfoil hat theory that crosses the airwaves is VERY tiresome and distressing, and I have run out of tolerance for it.

42. Ooooh, and how could I forget? Because of your double standards. You apparently believe that other people should always conform to a standard of absolute, idealistic perfection in everything they do, while you fail to rise to even the most minimal standards of simple human decency. Example: I inappropriately blow up at you one night and the next day you lecture me about how I shouldn’t treat you badly and then smile and apologise about it the next morning, that I ought to fix the problem instead. Yes, of course. But at least I do recognize that I was in the wrong AND apologise, while you routinely abuse the shit out of me and then get up the next morning and act as if nothing the least bit untoward had occurred, and practically NEVER apologise for your abominable behaviour! fuckwad….

43. Following the “double” theme, because of your doublespeak. You preface a conversation (and I use that term loosely) with some version of “I’m not complaining” or “I’m not trying to start a fight”, when that is EXACTLY what you are doing! Ok, maybe you sincerely believe you are not complaining or trying to pick a fight because you equally sincerely do not understand that practically every damn sound that comes out of your mouth is fussing/whining/complaining or critical, inflammatory, accusatory or vituperative. Get a fucking clue and get the fuck out already!

44. For that matter, because of your “deflect and project” M.O. across the board.

45. Because I am not willing to waste any more of my lifetime stuck in this thankless role as the uncompensated custodian of a mentally disturbed, drug-addicted special needs child that is older than I am. I have absolutely had enough of having to deal with tedious, infuriating childish nonsense every fucking day of my life when I NEVER WANTED CHILDREN IN THE FIRST PLACE!!

47. Because I simply cannot afford to spend any more of my lifetime being held hostage to your deeply defective, wrong-headed decision-making.

48. The biggest reason: Because there is virtually nothing in this for me! Most of the time I find your presence so distressing and aggravating it’s unbearable. Worse still…

49. Because having to suffer your profoundly dysfunctional behaviour on a constant, day-in-day-out basis burns up all of my mental RAM and vital energy in a totally pointless way, making it unavailable for me to use for anything else, such as find my way out of this fucking mess!

50. Bottom line: Because you are a violent, abusive, destructive, drug-addicted mental case, and I am not able to cope with that on a continuous, ongoing basis, and nobody should have to.

Q.E. fucking D.!

******************

Afterword:

In all fairness, Chi is an exceptionally gifted, intelligent, highly refined being and there is a great deal to love and revere and appreciate about him. Nevertheless, he has some profoundly entrenched character defects that unfortunately control his behaviour, making him incredibly difficult and frustrating to work and live with, if not outrightly impossible. He is SUCH a delightful person when he isn’t doing his mental illness and/or drug addiction, but the ratios of good to bad behaviour have got so wildly out of balance in recent years that I just can’t do it anymore. Particularly after 3/11/11 when he totally went off the rails and commenced a ruthless campaign to take me down with him.

Really Chi? Seriously??! We don’t have enough noise and clutter and junk around here already, so we need a fucking shower radio??! Yes, this is the type of stuff he spends what little money he actually does earn on, *instead of* contributing to rent, household overhead, etc.; and yes, this is a textbook example of one of the manifold reasons why I am divorcing him.

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